90s04 Storytelling Takes Off

Stepping away from the classroom meant I stepped away from relationships and contact with kids. I have always been energized by the contact. I knew one way to continue it, in a reduced way, was to continue the storytelling in classrooms.

Wanting to do that and doing that are two different things. Teachers are protective of their classrooms and their instructional time and don’t want just anyone coming in. Somehow I had to build some credibility with them without forcing myself on them.

I don’t know for sure where I told my first story, in WACO or Mediapolis classrooms? I brief reference in my journal makes me think it might have been “Taily-po” in Linda Wilkerson’s classroom some time that fall. My storytelling slowly spread at WACO first and then at Mediapolis. I had a rule of never asking if I could tell stories in a classroom and always waiting for an invitation. That may have slowed me down but I wanted to make sure the teachers wanted me in their classrooms.

In the fall of 1990 I started keeping a log of each time I told stories in a classroom and what stories I used. By the end of September I had told stories in eleven different classrooms. Unfortunately, I didn’t always put the date in the log but by November 7, I had added an additional 26 for a total of 37 times. My reputation was growing! By Christmas break I was up to 62 storytelling sessions in classrooms. I was finding it difficult to keep up with all of the sessions let alone write them all down.

By the end of the school year I had told stories 123 times in classrooms. There are only 180 school days in a school year so I was obviously busy! I had been forced to start telling people no because I had so much other work to do. One good side effect was that I got to know the teachers and students and that paid off in the future. I’ll get to that later.

The pace tapered off considerably the second year partly because I was running out of stories and I was so busy with my job. Storytelling outside the district, in other schools and at other events picked up however. The word was out and I had to turn down many requests because I just didn’t have time.

I should have kept logging where, when and what stories I told but didn’t. It is a disadvantage when you are invited back to a place for the third or fourth time and you can’t remember the stories you told when you were there before. The kids didn’t usually seem to care if I told the same story more than once but I still tried not to do it.

The storytelling continues to this day and hopefully continues well into retirement. There is a magic to it and I love to see the story unfold in the eyes of the listeners. I worked at crafting the story to allow that magic to happen. I will write more about it another time.